are the often non-standard
kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequen ...
character readings (pronunciations) found almost exclusively in
Japanese name
in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by a given name, in that order. Nevertheless, when a Japanese name is written in the Roman alphabet, ever since the Meiji era, the official policy has been to cater to Western expect ...
s.
In the
Japanese language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...
, many Japanese names are constructed from
common characters with standard pronunciations. However, names may also contain rare characters which only occur as parts of names, or use non-standard readings of common characters. Often, the readings used are so esoteric that they cannot even be found in dictionaries.
For example, the character , meaning "hope" or "rare", has standard pronunciations , , and . However, as a female name, it can be pronounced
Nozomi.
In compounds, ''nanori'' readings can be used in conjunction with other readings, such as in the name
Iida (). Here, , a character meaning 'meal', is normally read as either or , but in the context of this name the special ''nanori'' reading is used instead. The second character is read using its standard ''
kun'yomi
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subseque ...
'' reading, .
Often (as in the previous example), the ''nanori'' reading is related to the general meaning of the kanji, as it is frequently an old-fashioned way to read the character that has since fallen into disuse.
See also
* ''
On'yomi
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequen ...
'', readings of kanji based on Chinese pronunciation
* ''
Kun'yomi
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subseque ...
'', readings of kanji based on Japanese pronunciation
References
{{reflist
Kanji
Japanese writing system terms
Japanese names